More Top Tens.

[layne67]

Interesting discussion here at aprilkat's journal on the Top Ten of our favourite movies. Now I know what my LJ-friends like to watch!

What about books? What are your favourite ten books ( or more )? Books that you'll always remember and some you can even quote the lines by heart.

Here are mine :

LotR by JRR Tolkien.
Katya by Trevanian. A psychiatric thriller with a very gothic feel.
Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett.
Dead Famous by Ben Elton. A mix of murder thriller and comedy. I stayed up all night reading it. A must-read for fans of reality TV shows.
As Meat Loves Salt by Maria McCann. I'm still lugging the book around with me, reading certain parts from time to time.
All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot. An all-time favourite of mine. Since knowing James, Tristan and Siegfried, I've never look at vets the same way again.
Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel. I love the heroine so much so that Ayla was one of the names short-listed if my baby were to be a girl.
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie. A whodunit classic.
Coastliners by Joanne Harris. Romance and intrigue at a small French village. From the same author who wrote 'Chocolat'.
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier and its sequel Rebecca's Tale by Sally Beaumann.
Salem's Lot by Stephen King.
Flowers in the Attic by Virginia C. Andrews.
Post Mortem by Patricia Cornwell.
Harry Porter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rawling. I think that's her best and I also think the movie adaptation is the best of the four.

So, what are yours?

Comments

[majblomma2000.livejournal.com]

Ohhh, very good list!!!

5 of your books are also favourites of mine! :D

Pillars of the Earth is my top favourite book. You know I'm also crazy about James Herriot and his fellow friends. *beams*
Love the Clan of the Cave Bear and LotR. I agree with you about the third of the Harry Potter books is the best but I didn't like the movie. I can't take what they've done to Ron.

I'm going to start reading Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco so I'm really looking forward to that. Jonathan Stroud is also a really good author. :) Eddings. And I've got some Swedish books and authors as well :)

[layne67.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. Stroud. I've read the first two books and I have the 3rd one which i haven't started yet. I'm reading 'Eldest' now, 'Eragon''s sequel :)

Have you read all of Jean M auel's Earth Children series?

[i-o-r-h-a-e-l.livejournal.com]

Read the first chap of Name of the Rose and it was quite hilarious! Why I haven't continued it I have no idea. :)

[shirebound]

Ten?? Narrow it down to Ten???? Impossible. This is just off the top of my head, there are tons more...

The Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien)
Karen (Marie Killilea)
With Love from Karen (Marie Killilea)
The Source (James Michener)
Hanta Yo (Ruth Beebe Hill)
Siddhartha (Herman Hesse)
Taran Wanderer (Lloyd Alexander)
Mister God, This is Anna (Fynn)
Death Be Not Proud (John Gunther
A Shining Season (William Buchanan)
Centennial (James Michener)
Maiden Voyage (Tania Aebi)
The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
Harpo Speaks (Harpo Marx)
The Story of the Trapp Family Singers (Maria von Trapp)
Roots (Alex Haley)
At Home in the Woods (Bradford Angier)
A Walk Across America (Peter Jenkins)
Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein)
The Bridge Across Forever (Richard Bach)
Through Deerhound Eyes (The Roil Literati)

[layne67.livejournal.com]

Roots and Centennial!

*bounces*

I love the books as well as the mini-series. Pretty powerful, both of them. I haven't read /heard of the others though.

*takes note*

[mews1945.livejournal.com]

I loved Death Be Not Proud and Stranger in a Stranger in a Strange Land.

[aprilkat.livejournal.com]

OMG, Harpo Speaks is one of my top books too!

[claudia603.livejournal.com]

THis is a hard one! :-)

1. LOTR (duh)
2. Maia by Richard Adams
3. The Stand by Stephen King
4. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
5. The Persian Boy by Mary Renault
6. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott (non fiction)
7. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

[majblomma2000.livejournal.com]

Oh, the Outsiders! I remember when I was younger I used to read it over and over again. I got it for a Christmas present and my dad took it because I wouldn't make my homework. :)

[layne67.livejournal.com]

Is that the same Richard Adams who wrote 'Watership Down'? I read 'The Hobbit' right after WD and hee, I think that that book somehow influnced me in thinking that hobbits looked like rabbits then heheh ( I was 12 at that time ) .

'The Persian Boy'! I read that only recently and Elijah is definitely Bagoas for me!

[aprilkat.livejournal.com]

Aaggh. I forgot to put the Persian Boy on my list, and I'd already reached 10 anyway. But I LOVE it, and The Charioteer as well.

And my Lamott selection was Traveling Mercies, but I can see why you would be enamored of Bird by Bird, as a writer yourself...

[i-o-r-h-a-e-l.livejournal.com]

I love The Stand the mini series. :)

[cloudlessclimes.livejournal.com]

I love talking about books!

1.Beloved by Toni Morrison
2.Middlemarch by George Eliot
3.Possession by A.S. Byatt
4.Dance of the Happy Shades by Carol Shields
5.The Bookseller by Matt Cohen
6.Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje
7.Frankenstein by Mary Shelly
8.The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler
9.The Famished Road by Ben Okri
10.Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels

and as an added bonus duo Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Johnathan Safran Foer

[layne67.livejournal.com]

You gave links!!

I've read Frankenstein and I love Eliot though I haven't read that book yet. If I were to buy one, which one would you reccommend?

I love talking about books too!

[mews1945.livejournal.com]

I couldn't get my list down to 10. These are the books that I'd want with me if I were lost on a desert island:

Lord of the Rings
A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'engle
A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L'engle
Ironman by Chris Crutcher
The Witches of Karres by James Schmitz
The Talisman by Stephen King
A Farmwife's Almanac of Country Living by Rachel Peden
Red Moon and Black Mountain by Joy Chant
Dangerous Visions Sci Fi anthology, edited by Harlan Ellison
Wanderer of the Wastelands by Zane Grey
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King

[layne67.livejournal.com]

I love those 2 books of Stephen King that you mentioned. I love all of his books actually - Misery is another favourite. I have 4 of his books on my bookshelves waiting to be read :)

[aprilkat.livejournal.com]

I absolutely LOVE Girl of the Limberlost - I read my grandmother's copy as a girl, and she finally gave it to me for my very own!

[aprilkat.livejournal.com]

My apologies, Layne, but I have been so crazed this week - and I couldn't seem to pin down my favorites. However, listed below are some books I couldn't do without in my collection (sometimes I cheat and put down an author's series). In no order:

LOTR - J.R.R. Tolkien
Pride & Prejudice - Jane Austen
Harpo Speaks - Harpo Marx
The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
The Children of Violence series - Doris Lessing
Another Country - James Baldwin
All the Louisa May Alcott children's books
Traveling Mercies - Anne Lamott
Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
All the Amelia Peabody Emerson books by Elizabeth Peters

[mews1945.livejournal.com]

Oh, god, Traveling Mercies just wrecked me in a good way. What a great book.

[surgicalsteel.livejournal.com]

I've been pondering this one:
LOTR goes without saying
The Earthsea books by Ursula K LeGuin
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
CS Lewis' Space Trilogy

That's all I can think of at the moment, but I'm sure there's more...

[surgicalsteel.livejournal.com]

Almost forgot 'House of God' by Sam Shem, the classic novel on medical internship, and any of Richard Selzer's essay books: 'Rituals of Surgery,' 'Confessions of a Knife,' 'Letters to a Young Doctor.'

[i-o-r-h-a-e-l.livejournal.com]

Your post is buried under hundred others. Sorry if I didn't find it earlier!

:)

Here's mine:
1. The Fifth Mountain by Paulo Coelho. (I'd really like to put LOTR here, but I'm very sorry, I can. :()
2. The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
3. The Alchemist again by Paulo Coelho. (Actually I love everything he writes.)
4. Timeline by Michael Crichton. He is such a genius. I love many books of his.
5. Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer.
6. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. With wee!Elijah in mind? :D
7. The Famous Five by Enid Blyton.
8. The Firm by John Grisham.
9. Tia by Kembang Manggis. I can't forget this book. It made me cry a river that night. *sheepish*
10. Ribuan Mil Dari Mama by Leila S. Chudori. I don't read Indonesian novels a lot but these two have really captured my heart.


♥ you

[chloe-amethyst.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the Indonesian novels are in English translation somewhere. I'd be interested in reading them.

[melyanna-65.livejournal.com]

Good list. Obviusly LOTR and Harry Potter are in my list, too!

It's hard to say only 10, anyway here are some of my favourite:

1) LOTR - Tolkien
2)The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
3)Tales - Edgar Allan Poe
4) Harry Potter (each one) - JKK Rowling
5) Dracula - Bram Stoker
6)Diaries - Anais Nin
7) Whuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8) Io uccido - Giorgio Faletti (I Kill, I think)
9) Alice in wonderland and through the mirror - Lewis Carrol
10) Poetries - Arthur Rimbaud

Thanks for sharing, hon!

[layne67.livejournal.com]

You know. I've seen a lot of Dracula in many verions of movies but I have not read the book yet. And Frankestein too. I've been meaning to read these two books for quite some time but never get around to it :/

And Heathcliff was my hero for quite a long time :))

[i-o-r-h-a-e-l.livejournal.com]

And I have to say here that I still want to buy that As Meat Loves Salt! :D

[layne67.livejournal.com]

BUY IT!!!!

[mochness.livejournal.com]

The list sounds interesting, especially since I only read 2 of the ones you've listed; LoTR and HP :P

I'm saving your list for inspirational book-buying in the future. Thanks a lot :D

[layne67.livejournal.com]

Your book-list is even more inspirational.

:)))

[cairistiona7.livejournal.com]

Oh gosh, Salem's Lot! I forgot about that one... it was the first horror book I ever read. I don't read horror anymore but I still remember scaring the bejebus out of myself with that one in the 7th grade. LOL

[layne67.livejournal.com]

It was a very chilling book, wasn't it? One of the scariest IMO, and until now just hearing the name "Salem" gives me goosebumps!